Fraud and avarice are the vices of society, and do not thrive in the shade of the forest. The hunter, like the sailor, has little thought of coveting or amassing. He does not forge, nor cheat, nor steal; as such an unprincipled person must have done in the world, where, instead of wild beasts, he must have preyed upon his fellows; and he does not drink much, because liquor is not attainable. But he becomes coarse, savage, and totally negligent of all the forms and decencies of life. He grows wild and unsocial. To him a neighbour is an encroacher. He has learnt to do without one; and he knows not how to yield to him in any point of mutual accommodation. He cares neither to give nor take assistance, and finds all the society he wants in his own family. Selfish from the overindulged love of ease and liberty, he sees in a new comer merely an abridgment of his range, and an interloper in that sport on which he would much rather depend for subsistence than on the habits of regular industry. What can more flatter an imagination warm with native benevolence, and animated by romantic enthusiasm, than the image of insulated self-dependant families, growing up in those primeval retreats, remote from the corruptions of the world, and dwelling amidst the prodigality of nature. Nothing, however, can be more anti-Arcadian. There no crook is seen, no pipe is heard, no lamb bleats, for the best possible reason, because there are no sheep. No pastoral strains awake the sleeping echoes, doomed to sleep on till the bull-frog, the wolf, and the Quackawarry[26] begin their nightly concert. Seriously, it is not a place that can, in any instance, constitute happiness. When listless indolence or lawless turbulence fly to shades the most tranquil, or scenes the most beautiful, they degrade nature instead of improving or enjoying her charms. Active diligence, a sense of our duty to the source of all good, and kindly affections towards our fellow-creatures, with a degree of self-command and mental improvement, can alone produce the gentle manners that insure rural peace, or enable us, with intelligence and gratitude, to “rejoice in nature’s joys.” Footnote 26: Quackawarry is the Indian name of a bird, which flies about in the night, making a noise similar to the sound of its name. ------- CHAP. LXV. Sketch of the Settlement of Pennsylvania. FAIN would I turn from this gloomy and uncertain prospect, so disappointing to philanthropy, and so subversive of all the flattering hopes and sanguine predictions of the poets and philosophers, who were wont to look forward to a new Atalantis, “Famed for arts and laws derived from Jove,” in this western world. But I cannot quit the fond retrospect of what once was in one favoured spot, without indulging a distant hope of what may emerge from this dark disordered state.